Tomorrow, 18 July, is World Listening Day 2013. The sound studies blog is hosting a forum on listening in honor of the occasion, which has produced a series of excellent posts. Most recent is a lovely post on how listening can open up introspective spaces in the writing classroom. In addition to many insightful ideas for reflective assignments that stem from listening exercises, the section on sonic material culture offers resounding examples of the cultural organology thesis:

one student’s love of all things vintage led her to her father’s manual typewriter and an essay combining family history and larger insights about education, workplaces, and mechanical writing. In each of these cases, the students realized that the sounds cannot be extricated from the material, social, and historical conditions that produce them.